“Five million dollars does buy a lot of dog beds,” I say with a smile.
“Yeah? Does that mean you’re thinking about saying yes?”
Shaking my head, I put my hands to my overheated cheeks. “It’s crazy, Slade.”
“You don’t end up in the Montana wilderness without coming from a long line of people who’ve done crazy things to end up here.” He takes a step closer and drapes an arm around me, his other hand gesturing out across the valley spread below us. “You can’t see it from here, but Rosemont, our family estate, is to the east side. The original part of the house was built in the mid 1800s, before Montana was a state.”
“Wow. That’s even older than my family’s home.”
“Legend has it their money came from ill-gotten gains. The first Rhodes’s were highwaymen and bank robbers. My ancestors probably robbed your ancestors, back in the day.”
“Huh. Funny to think two hundred years ago we would have met when you held up my train and stole all my jewels.”
His eyes glint. “Two hundred years ago I might’ve stolenyou.”
The dark, playful look he gives me makes heat cascade through me. Slade might be kidding… but maybe not. I don’t mind either way.
“You would have saved me from a very dull existence,” I tell him. “I’d have taken the outlaw life with you any day.”
His fingertips squeeze my shoulder and he pulls me infinitesimally closer. “My brothers have their own houseshere too, scattered across the land. Thirty thousand acres. From that river line all the way to the base of those mountains. You can ride for hours and never reach the end of it.”
I lean into his warmth instinctively. “This feels like a very ‘Lion King’ moment.”
“I did just watch it with my eight year old nephew,” Slade says. I glance up at him, surprised, and he shrugs, almost smiling. “Told you I know movies. Most of them these days are Disney, though.”
I picture him sitting down to watch a kid’s movie with his nephew and my heart melts. He’s not just Slade Rhodes, NHL menace-on-ice or the gruff, gorgeous cowboy of my fantasies—he’s a human being. He loves and is loved by his family. He’ll rescue a three-legged dog and apparently has a soft spot for a damsel-in-distress—me and Lucky both.
Beneath that tough, cold exterior, there’s a big, warm heart. One that I would very much like to get to know better.
Slade looks down at me, eyes glinting. “Everything beneath the starlight will be your kingdom.”
We stand together on the edge of the cliff. The sun is going down behind the peaks, tinting the whole valley in shades of lavender and salmon-pink.
I try to imagine riding across this land as if I belonged here. The meadow grass rippling in the wind like an ocean of liquid gold. Flying past the other horses and cattle moving through the pastures, the mothers and babies clustering together against the chill. The sun on my face, watching the way it turns the clouds into opals floating in an amethyst sky. Wind in my hair, fresh air in my lungs.Freedom.
This land deserves an artist or a poet to capture its essence. All I’ll have to remember it by is my heart. My heart, which already knows the cowboy standing beside me belongs to this land the way the mountains do: here before I arrived and will be here long after I’m gone.
My future husband, if I say yes.
For a little while, at least.
“Let’s do it,” I say. “Let’s get married.”
Chapter 11
Mail Order Bride
SLADE
Whenever my brothers and I are in town at the same time, my father insists on gathering us together for a Rhodes family dinner.
After hearing about Lila’s family, the trust fund with strings attached, the siblings circling like vultures… it hits different now, my dad calling us kids together just to see our faces.
We all gather together. Most of us, that is. I know Dad wants my sister Josie here too, but she comes back to Marble Falls about twice a year, and she’s due to return for Thanksgiving. So it’s just me, my older brother Walker, and my younger brother Tanner, plus Rafe. Not to mention Jonah, Walker’s eight-year-old son.
Tonight we also have the newest additions to our family dinners: Sadie, Walker’s wife, and their twin girls. Sadie comes through the door with one baby and Walker has theother.
As luck would have it, the stove is out of commission at Rosemont, so Dad has to convene our family dinner in the private room of Marble Falls’ best steakhouse.
